


Unravelling

by featherxquill



Category: The Infinite Bad (Podcast)
Genre: Comfort/Angst, Families of Choice, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Spoilers for Season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 18:43:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15153293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherxquill/pseuds/featherxquill
Summary: On their return voyage to London, Joy and Cornelia share a moment.





	Unravelling

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Myx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myx/pseuds/Myx) for the beta!

The air is cool and fresh; sunrise is just breaking over the blue horizon. Joy takes a deep, steadying breath, and gazes out to sea. 

The sight of so much water still unnerves her, but in the wake of her plunge into the temple pool and all the terrifying memories that emerged beneath its surface, she feels purged, cleansed, like no vast expanse could even come close to the horror contained within that basin. And so she stands, looking out at the thing she has been most afraid of for so long, holding her fear in her hands and imagining it gone, reaching out over the railing and picturing each of those memories spilling through her fingers and being pulled away by the tide. 

It works. Not entirely, but it works; the knot in her gut feels smaller with each passing day. She is hopeful that one day she might unravel it completely. 

Or perhaps she is just grateful to have only fear writhing inside her. 

There is a noise behind her, and Joy turns, hand quickly gripping the ship’s rail as she spins around, tensing and then relaxing. 

It’s Cornelia, and Joy smiles to see her up and about. Their return to Bombay hadn’t been kind to her. Days of holding herself up out of necessity had meant that the cracks started to show almost as soon as it was all over, and she spent most of their ride back sleeping fitfully against Joy’s shoulder, feverish and shaking. They got her some quinine as soon as they were back in civilisation, but for days it scarcely helped; the side-effects of the medication were almost as debilitating as the malaria itself. Joy spent most of that time by Cornelia’s bedside, holding her hand and mopping her brow, trying to ignore the creeping fear that she might be losing another mother. 

It wasn’t an easy recovery. Awake, Cornelia sweated and shook with fever, and when she slept she seemed to be plagued by nightmares that she steadfastly refused to discuss when awake, but which Joy strongly suspected were related to her experiences in the cavern, if what she muttered during them was any indication. The only acknowledgment she would make of mental discomfort was a strong inclination to be gone from India and back on British soil, and so they made arrangements for their return as soon as she was ambulant. 

Now, a week into their journey, she seems to be over the worst of the disease and its treatment, although the quinine is still affecting her vision and making her ears ring. It’s pronounced enough that she’s using a cane for balance against the ship’s movement - a device she initially resisted, but seemed to take to when she realised that waving it at people usually resulted in her getting her way. Joy doesn’t think that Cornelia will bear any lasting physical scars from their ordeal, but when it comes to the mental ones, she’s less certain. 

“Good morning,” Cornelia says, sounding tired, but cheerful. “When you weren’t in your room, I wondered if I might find you out here.” 

Joy releases the ship’s rail and moves towards her mother. “I was just…” she begins, then trails off. She’s not sure she knows how to articulate what she was doing, and even if she could, she doesn’t think the words would come easily. “Were you looking for me?” she asks instead. 

“Yes,” Cornelia answers, facing her as she approaches. “Do I look all right? Fit for breakfast? Only this blasted medication is still making it hard to focus, so I can’t really tell.”

Joy stops a few feet from Cornelia, looks her up and down. The long skirt and blouse she is wearing look perfectly acceptable - Joy congratulates herself again for correctly estimating her mother’s size when she, Sebastian and Dorothy went shopping in Bombay - but the light cardigan she has pulled over the top is sitting unevenly. 

“Your buttons are a bit squiffy,” she says, stepping forward to correct them. She makes short work of the task, then tugs the hemline straight and untucks the blouse’s collar, finding that her fingers snag in loose strands of Cornelia’s hair as she does so. 

“And my hair’s a bit of a mess,” Cornelia says wryly. 

“A bit,” Joy agrees. 

“I thought as much.” Cornelia produces a comb from her pocket. “Could you fix it for me?”

Joy smiles. “Of course.” 

They move to a chair that is somewhat shielded from the sea breeze, and soon Cornelia’s braid is hanging loose in Joy’s hands. She works her fingers into it, gently pulling the strands apart, then slides them through to ease any large tangles out. 

“I used to do this for my sister,” she says, almost before the thought forms in her head. It’s been a long time since she gave her lost family space in her mind, but as soon as she speaks she remembers her sister clearly, remembers the last time she did this. The two of them were doubled up in their third class berth, Enid’s hair a dark waterfall over her fingers. Their parents were laughing somewhere off to the right, playing cards with some other passengers they’d met on board. Joy remembers that Enid had pleaded with her to use the pretty blue ribbons to tie her braids, but as they were preparing for bed, Joy refused, because they’d only get crumpled and ruined. Joy remembers her sister’s whining, remembers the way she tugged Enid’s hair just a little too hard in retaliation. It swims in front of her for a moment, the memory, as real as life, but then she’s back on the deck and it’s Cornelia’s fine mane of greying blonde in her hands, rippling in the morning air. There was a time she would have pushed the thought down, thinking it better to pretend her memories didn’t exist, but here and now she lets it stay, makes Enid even more real by adding: “She was six, when it happened.” She leans forward to reach for the comb Cornelia is holding, and Cornelia brushes her fingers over the back of Joy’s hand after she takes it. 

Joy runs the comb through Cornelia’s hair. It’s longer than one might first expect, given that she usually wears it braided or pinned up against the back of her head. Loose, it hangs down past her shoulder blades, and Joy finds the process of combing its tangles out rather soothing. Meditative. 

Cornelia seems to as well. “Brendel used to love my hair,” she says, and his name is an ache in her voice. “When we were courting, he asked me for a lock of it before he went off on one of his voyages. To help him find his way back to me. After we were married, he had it sewn into the lining of his captain’s jacket. I sometimes wondered if he’d somehow managed to lose it.” Joy finishes her combing, but is almost afraid to stop. This is the first time that Cornelia has acknowledged unprompted that the events in the cavern even happened, and Joy doesn’t want to spook her into silence. Still, she eventually has to acknowledge that the job is done, and quietly slips the comb into her own pocket. She gathers Cornelia’s hair up into three strands and begins to braid it, hoping that she will continue. 

After a moment, she does. “Our son was four when Brendel was lost at sea. I left him with the nanny while I ran off to search, and then grieve. When I returned to England, it was only for long enough to pack him off to boarding school, which he’s never forgiven me for. Brendel and I were only married for a year before I fell pregnant. We barely had any time at all. I spent so long mourning him...and he was…” She can’t seem to finish the sentence. Her shoulders slump, and Joy quickly finishes the braid and ties it off, then reaches down to squeeze Cornelia’s shoulders, before abandoning their British propriety entirely and curling her arms around her mother, leaning against her back and hugging her close. 

Cornelia’s hand finds one of hers and squeezes it tight. She isn’t crying, but Joy can feel her shoulders trembling like they had in the grip of fever. Joy presses her cheek against her mother’s and rocks her from side to side. 

“He was taken in,” she murmurs, “duped like so many others.”

“No,” Cornelia replies, and there is a venom in her voice the likes of which Joy has never heard before. “He was _weak_. He had a wife and a son; we should have been enough.”

Joy understands anger, knows the terrible power of it and that it can’t be soothed, only acknowledged. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers, and kisses Cornelia’s cheek. Then, seemingly overcome by Englishness, she rights herself, standing up behind Cornelia and looking out at the sea once again. 

Cornelia’s hand doesn’t let go of hers, though. They stay there like that for quite a while, Joy’s arm draped over Cornelia’s shoulder and their fingers entwined, watching as a distant island appears on the horizon, becomes a dusty smudge and then fades from view. Once again, the fear of open water nibbles at Joy’s gut, but it barely touches her resolve this time - the determination she felt in India has only grown stronger with the revelation of Cornelia’s pain. There is a debt here, forty years in arrears, and _someone_ is going to pay for it. 

As if sensing Joy’s thoughts, Cornelia speaks again. “We will get them, won’t we?” she asks.

“Absolutely,” Joy replies.


End file.
